


Faith in Nights

by whopooh



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, First Time, Phrack Fucking Friday, Poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke by the fireside, pff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12857007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whopooh/pseuds/whopooh
Summary: Phryne and Jack attend a poetry soirée that turns out to be excrutiatingly dull--there's not even a murder in sight. Can Phryne find a way to escape? And can she lure Jack into a private poetry evening instead, reading Rilke by the fireside?This is my first ever attempt to write a fic for the PFF. Since I won't have time to post tomorrow when it's actually Friday, I'm posting one day too early.





	Faith in Nights

”I’m sorry Jack. I know this is all my fault.”

Phryne’s whisper was followed by an apologetic side glance in his direction. 

“You know my view on you apologising, Miss Fisher,” Jack grumbled, without for a second betraying he wasn’t fully focused on what was happening in front of them.

“This time, I feel it’s warranted." 

It was Phryne who had leaped at the thought of listening to some proper culture when she’d seen the ad in _The Argus_ about a literary soirée at the Windsor. She had asked Jack to join, citing the need to blend in with all sorts of people to really _know_ Melbourne, and if her voice on the telephone took on a very seductive tone, that hadn’t discouraged him. He agreed after the tiniest display of reluctance. 

They had solved the case at the Pandarus a couple of weeks ago; the memory of that almost-kiss in her hallway made Phryne sigh with frustration. Even if they had met a couple of times since then, there had been nothing. Perhaps poetry could be the way to get the reticent man to finally express himself. She wanted to see him glow with that delicious love of literature he had shown when reciting Shakespeare on stage, or in his quick interpretation of Rilke in Maiden Creek; memories she had come to savour. 

Luckily, a soirée at the Windsor meant Jack had to show up in evening wear. Unluckily, the evening had turned out to be absolutely dull, comprised almost exclusively of men enamoured with the sound of their own voices. Even more unfortunately, Phryne hadn’t had the chance to discourage Jack before he had picked seats in the front, which meant their every movement and conversation was immediately noticed from the stage and by the guests of honour surrounding them. Jack hadn’t realised his mistake until the program had started. 

Phryne reached out stealthily, brushing the back of her hand against his. It sent a shiver through Jack; internally he cursed his own instantaneous reaction to her, hoping she didn’t notice. He waited a few beats before replying:

“That man is never going to stop talking, is he?” 

He chanced a look at her and quickly looked straight forward again, suppressing a smile. He had never seen Phryne look so bored, and her attempts at hiding the fact were highly unsuccessful. She also squirmed now and then in her seat, those small movements of a body fearing it might combust if forced to be still for another second. It was endearing to see in a woman whose social persona was usually so close to perfection.

Those squirms didn’t help him in the least to focus on what was happening on stage. His senses seemed to be heightened to double awareness, and fully attuned to the body next to his. Before he could stop himself, his mind had begun to wonder how the silky material in her dress was coping with being stuck between Phryne’s moving body and the hard chair. Realising he was contemplating the feel of silk over her bottom, he blushed and put on an extra stern look on his face.

Jack managed to not glance at her for several minutes, priding himself on more or less following the incoherent and self-congratulatory man on stage. Phryne leaned towards him.

“Please tell me he didn’t just say that orchestra is meant to play three more songs, and then he’ll continue with more epic poetry,” she whispered. 

“I’m afraid that would be lying, Miss Fisher.”

They fell silent and watched the orchestra walk up on stage again, preparing for a full-on slaughter of the audience’s senses. 

Suddenly, so lightly it almost wasn’t real, Jack felt a hand caress his knee. Phryne breathed into his ear:

“What reward would you give me if I managed to get us out of here?” 

Jack felt his leg develop gooseflesh, all the way from her touch up over his thighs.

“What do you mean?” The question came out decidedly louder and more high-pitched than he’d intended.

“Would you read me Rilke by the fire? Make this a proper poetry night?” This time she gazed at him from under her lashes.

He swallowed visibly.

“I…” he began. “I suppose?”

Phryne smiled and squeezed his knee a little bit harder before letting go. Then she let out a sigh of anguish so convincing Jack turned to see what was the matter with her, before he remembered what he had just agreed to.

“Are you alright, Miss Fisher?” the older gentleman to her left asked, worry written all over his face.

“I’m so sorry, Mr Albright, I fear I am not,” she answered faintly, touching her chest with one hand, slightly overdramatically. “I have been looking forward to the continuation of Mr Burn’s epic mastery, but it seems my weak constitution cannot handle too much of the strong poison we call poetry.”

The man nodded sympathetically. 

“That happens to even the strongest; just think of Stendahl. Of course, the female constitution is even more susceptible to that kind of powerful impression.” 

Jack’s eyes grew large at the thought of Phryne having a weak constitution, and then turned into a squint at the idea that the evening’s pompous gibberish could have a power to impress anyone. Clearly, the man must be a close friend to the author.

“Will you manage by yourself, Miss Fisher?” 

“I’m afraid I won’t, Mr Albright. I’ll have to steal away another of your spectators. Please, Mr Robinson, would you be kind enough to escort me home?”

“Of course, Miss Fisher,” Jack said, a little bit stunned to be a “Mr”. 

They quickly made their way past the line of chairs, apologising to the people standing up to let them pass, meeting only sympathetic eyes. Just as they reached the door, the orchestra stroke up their first accord; Phryne and Jack escaped to the wardrobe and then into the beautiful night.

Jack looked at Phryne in wonder.

“The stage did lose a talent when you turned to detecting.”

“You are a flatterer.” Her smile was bright and content.

They walked a block and as they approached the parked Hispano-Suiza, Phryne dug out the key from her handbag. Before she managed anything more, Jack snatched the key from her hand.

“I’m afraid I cannot allow you to drive, Miss Fisher,” he said solemnly. “Not with your delicate constitution having been so strongly compromised.” 

Phryne looked like a tiger that had been robbed of her dinner; it was a slightly frightening view. 

“Someone might see us,” he said in a quieter voice. “You better keep up your pretence for a little while longer.”

Phryne huffed in protest, but took the cue. “I guess I do still feel queasy,” she said, taking hold of his arm to support herself heavily on it. 

He opened the car door by the passenger seat and helped her in. As he drove, Phryne reclined in her seat and watched his concentrated face.

“If I’m too weak in my knees when we get there, you might have to carry me inside, Mr Robinson,” she said and dramatically closed her eyes.

 

***

 

To Jack’s relief Phryne didn’t go through with her threat, but walked by her own accord from the car. 

“It seems a car ride was exactly what my impressionable constitution needed,” she commented as she took Jack’s offered arm. She was quite certain he was contemplating a way to part at the door to Wardlow and pointedly said, “You do remember your promise of a better poetry evening, Jack?”

He gazed at her then, answering with a nod. “Of course, Miss Fisher.”

Mr Butler served them evening sandwiches and wine in the parlour. Sitting side by side on the chaise they spoke of the dreadful soirée and Phryne’s heroic solution in the end. 

“There’s nothing better than to be rescued by a damsel in distress, is there?” she said as she sipped her wine.

“The most efficient rescue I have ever had,” he conceded with a smile. 

She looked speculatively at him.

“I do think it’s time you kept your side of the bargain.”

He tilted his head to the side. “I have to confess I didn’t think to bring poetry to a poetry soirée.”

This just made Phryne smile and eagerly rise and stroll over to her bookshelf, to take out some volumes and hand them to him.

“Rilke,” he said, “in original.” He eyed her suspiciously. “I thought you didn’t speak German?”

“Not really, no. But it’s never too late to learn.” 

She smiled as she sat down again beside him, hoping he wouldn’t uncover the truth, that after their visit to Maiden Creek she’d gone to Miss Leigh’s bookstore and ordered all the Rilke volumes she could find. They had been sitting on her shelf since then, waiting for an evening just like this. 

“They’re beautiful,” Jack said, caressing the leather-bound covers.

“Please, read the German,” Phryne said, “and translate as you go.” There was such a wistfulness in her tone that he looked up sharply at her; the smile he saw was small and impossible to read.

He shuffled through one of the volumes, and started to read from a long elegy, self-conscious at first, but quickly finding a rhythm, hesitating here and there as he tried to find the right words in English. Suddenly he felt he was saying words that perhaps more his than the poet’s:

>   
>  _We do not know_  
>  _the contours of our feelings. We only know_  
>  _what shapes them from the outside._
> 
> _Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's_  
>  _curtain? It lifted and displayed the scenery_  
>  _of departure._

Phryne had leaned back and closed her eyes to better savour the sounds and the words caressing her ears through his voice. The second poem he read was from the _Book of Hours_ :

>   
>  _Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme,_  
>  _ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme,_  
>  _welche die Welt begrenzt_

He read these lines and Phryne enjoyed the words even as she only understood them in patches. She opened her eyes to take him in, sitting there in the chaise by her side: relaxed and focused, his voice vibrating out of his body like a living entity. When he returned to the lines in his attempt to translate into English, he read:

>   
>  _You darkness, that I come from,_  
>  _I love you more than all the fires_  
>  _that fence in the world,_  
>  _for the fire makes_  
>  _a circle of light for everyone,_  
>  _and then no one outside learns of you._

She loved those lines enough to lose her focus as the poem continued, until he ended on the words “ _I have faith in nights_ ”. They made her shiver. He noticed and broke off to look at her; the look in his eyes was unlike anything she’d seen in him before.

“Perhaps you do lose yourself to the powerful impressions of poetry after all, Miss Fisher” he rumbled. “I’m beginning to think that wasn’t entirely pretence.”

“It just has to be the right poetry,” she answered, her eyes as dark as his voice had been. “And the right reader.”

He felt his colour rise at that, at her intensity and all the promises that lay behind it. He put down the poetry book and leafed through one of the others instead, stopping when he found what he was looking for. He hesitated before he started, almost afraid of what he might unleash with this poem that seemed to talk about such carnal things, even as it proclaimed to be about Buddha:

>   
>  _Centre of all centres, core of cores,_  
>  _almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—_  
>  _all this universe, to the furthest stars_  
>  _all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit._

He couldn’t help but look up at her when he uttered those last words. She wasn’t leaning back anymore, but had straightened up so she could devour him with her eyes – there really wasn’t any other way to describe it. The longing for her, that he always carried with him like an extra layer of garment, but that had grown painful after that evening when he’d failed to kiss her, rose in his chest and threatened to constrict his throat. Phryne being his centre, the core of cores, and a beautiful fruit filled with the sweetest flesh – that was the kind of thing he didn’t allow himself to think, and if he did, it was at least never when the light was on. And now – here she was, close enough that he could feel her body heat next to him, and he had said those words aloud. He swallowed, but persisted. The only thing he could hide behind now was his role as a poetry reader.

>   
>  _Now you feel how nothing clings to you;_  
>  _your vast shell reaches into endless space,_  
>  _and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow._  
>  _Illuminated in your infinite peace…_

He didn’t get any further; Phryne put the book to the side and gracefully took its place in his lap. She straddled him, one knee on either side of his hip, putting one hand under his chin to make him look into her eyes.

“Jack…” she whispered, her voice soft as the silk of her dress. “That was…”

Before she could continue, he pulled her close so their lips could finally meet. When he opened his mouth to her she whimpered, meeting his tongue with her own – savouring this soft, wet origin of all those dulcet tones. The kiss was as deep as a well and as fresh as a sweet berry; promising, enticing, endless, but still not quelling any desires. There was no possible return from this, and he wanted none.

When they broke for air he placed his hand on her cheek and caressed it, letting his eyes travel between both of hers. “Phryne, I…” he started, but he didn’t know how to continue. “I…” 

“I want you, Jack,” she said, terrifying and beautiful in her bluntness. “Oh, how I want you.”

He looked away from her for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts as they swirled around in his head.

“Don’t you?” she asked, unsure of his lack of reaction.

His eyes quickly came back to hers.

“Of course,” he said, his voice breaking as he spoke. “How can you doubt it?”

She looked down on him, letting her finger trace the contour of his upper lip. “There is wanting and there is wanting, Jack. And it’s not easy to know with you.”

He cast his eyes downwards, as the subtlest kind of nod. Of course, she was right. He had wanted her for so long, but he had never really acknowledged it. Then he locked his gaze with her again.

“I do want you. _No_ ,” he said, shaking his head protesting his own words. “I love you.”

She kissed him again, even more intensely, holding his head between her hands as if he needed to be held fast, as if he wasn’t already there with the whole of his heart, and his body, and his mind. 

“Show me,” she whispered. 

With those words, she reached down and undid his bowtie, then started to unbutton his white shirt while capturing his lips with hers. His hands were at her hips, completely still, and she ceased her activity to look at him.

“What’s wrong, Jack?”

He shook himself into life.

“I’m not sure I can do this, Phryne.” 

She withdrew, looking slightly hurt, so he quickened his speech and reached for her lower back to keep her in place. “Here, in the parlour, I mean. I’m… not entirely comfortable about that.”

“Is that all?” Phryne said, relieved, caressing his cheek. She stood up and reached out her hand to him, noticing as he stood that he was the one who seemed to be weak in the knees. 

“Come with me. I think it’s time for another kind of poetry.”

 

***

 

Phryne brought him into her boudoir, closed the door and turned to face him. He was standing sock still in the middle of the room, his high-flying heart beating as if he’d climbed a mountain and not just a flight of stairs. 

She took a step towards him, then another, and he couldn’t help but think about a cat slowly approaching her prey. When he finally found his voice, he couldn’t find words of his own, only of the poet; he knew Rilke’s Panther by heart. As he took one stride to meet her, reaching out a hand to caress her cheek and then following the line of her neck, her shoulder, and down her arm, he rumbled:

>   
>  _The soft pace of her powerful, supple stride,_  
>  _That draws her round in tightened circles,_  
>  _Is like the dance of force about a centre,_  
>  _In which a greater will stands paralysed_

She inhaled quickly, her eyes growing large at this seduction through poetry he was so singularly good at. The hairs on the arm he touched stood on end. _That voice_. It was electric. It melted through her; she wondered if she could turn completely into fluid just by its gentle pronunciations. She stared at his mouth, noticing it came closer and closer, and when he captured her lips with his, her eyes fluttered shut of their own accord.

For a moment his lips were everything, the only point connecting her to the world at all: strong and pliant, soft and demanding, so utterly real. When he moaned into the kiss, she felt like she was lit on fire. Her hands reached out to his neck and shoulder to hold him there, to keep him forever devoured by this need crashing through her, so unreasonably strong. Despite her hold on him, he managed to withdraw a few inches, pressing his forehead to hers and gazing at her. 

“Jack…” she whispered.

He was overwhelmed – by her heat, by her scent, by her want, and by the way she was not afraid to show it. He had never felt this wanted in his life. If she was the cat with the powerful, supple stride, for some reason she didn’t seem to mind his paralysed stillness. But he had to break out from his habit of withdrawing. He searched for another of the lines from his beloved poet: _“For there’s a limit to gazing,”_ he said, his voice low and warm, the sensation of her body pressed to him making his skin tingle. _“And the gazed-at world wants to blossom in love.”_

That was a line that tried to melt her heart, but Phryne smiled. “You are right, there definitely is a limit,” she said, deciding to act on his words even if he didn’t himself, capturing his lips with her own while making him walk backwards until his knees hit the bed. He allowed himself to be pushed down onto the mattress and Phryne, lithe and strong above him, kissed him savagely and returned to the undressing she’d started in the parlour; glorying in the sensation of his clothes and how she was about to unravel them. 

He had never been undressed by a woman – not like this, nothing remotely like this. The way she found such obvious pleasure in unbuttoning his last buttons, and shedding his layers… she made him feel very weak and very strong at the same time. She pushed his shirt and his braces to the sides and over his shoulders, baring his torso to her while his arms were still covered. Then she kissed him again, quickly abandoning his lips to instead kiss his cheek, his ear, his throat, his skin... he rumbled from surprised pleasure. Then she kissed his shoulder – no she _licked_ it and _bit_ him.

“Phryne!” he exhaled, slightly stunned.

She stopped, hovering above him to look him straight in the eyes.

“Yes?” she asked.

“You…” He didn’t know how to say it – that the way she treated him, the way she wanted him, was a revelation to him. That he wasn’t sure how to handle it, to be so desired, as if he was something special and not just a grey, world-weary man who was not very young anymore. He didn’t dare to say it aloud for fear the spell would be broken.

“… you really are an exceedingly appreciative audience,” he said instead.

“It’s probably my sensitive feminine constitution,” she said with a quirked eyebrow. She sat down next to him, caressing his chest and his stomach with her soft, precise hands. “I suppose I have this reaction,” she said, smiling almost imperceptibly, “to beautiful things in life.”

She was watching him intently; her sincerity made him almost frightened. Was he ready for this? Could he shake off his immobility and meet the dance of force that was Phryne Fisher? He sat up so they were facing each other on the bed, knowing he had to be ready since there was no other thing he wanted more. 

He leaned on one arm, so he could capture her head with the other and pull her in for another, rather sloppy kiss. Tentatively, his hand moved down to search for a way to undress her. To his relief he found the fastenings almost immediately and managed to open the dress. His hand slowly made its way down her torso to liberate her from it, finding her warm and supple skin. Phryne broke the kiss and rose up to simply and swiftly pull off the dress. Her impatience turned his insides to fire and made him kiss her even more desperately as she pushed his shirt and braces off him before her hands did quick work on the buttons in his trousers; to his surprise, he saw them tremble slightly. 

Phryne rose so they could both remove the rest of their clothes. She crawled onto the bed and he followed her, laying beside her so he could again take her in his arms and kiss her. He let his hand go astray and finally caressed her small, soft breast. Her moan told him it was about time he got there; he couldn’t help but smile against her lips.

“What?” she said as she broke the kiss to look at him.

“Nothing. You’re so…” He paused to think. “Alive.” Another pause. “Impatient. Stunning.”

She smiled a slightly wistful smile.

“And you are so… surprised.”

As he opened his mouth to answer she brushed her hand down his stomach to softly cup his erection, which made him inhale sharply instead. She stroked him tenderly, before taking his still hand and placing it on her own sex, separating her legs slightly as an invitation. He caressed the hair and then slipped a finger inside her folds, his eyes going dark at the wetness he met. 

“Oh,” he said.

“I told you,” she said. “I want you.”

He caressed her tentatively at first, then more surely, slipping a finger inside her and basking in her reaction, the way she kissed him harder and stroked him a little more erratically. She put her leg over his hip to give him more space, and he caressed her most sensitive spot, whispering an encore from earlier in the evening: _“Centre of all centres, core of cores; almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet”_. The reaction he got was a curious mix of a moan and a huff. As he caressed her, he felt her trembling slightly, and he pushed his finger inside her again.

“More,” she breathed, and he let a second finger join the first’s rhythm. After a while, he could feel her shudder with pleasure. 

He grasped her leg and pushed it off him so he could make her lie on her back and she opened her legs in invitation. As he sank into her, her sigh mingled with his stuttered groan. His movements were slow at first, savouring this new sensation of being buried within her; she met every thrust he made. “Mmm,” she whispered in his ear, repeating the sound for every delicious push from his hips. She caressed his back with strong, impatient hands, one moving down to grasp and knead his buttock, obviously pleased when he gasped in surprise.

“Jack,” she said, and he stilled over her, a question in his eyes. Swiftly, before he had time to react, she rolled them over so she was on top. Her smile was smug and catlike and for some reason that just made his desire flame desperately higher. Of course she was bold, there was no way she wouldn’t be, and of course she would know how to win a struggle in the boudoir.

She rose over him like an apparition. As she started to move up and down his length he couldn’t help but groan at the change of sensation. Her answering smile made him reach out his hand for her, their eyes locked as he caressed her cheek, her throat, her breast, kneading it before rising to instead take it in his mouth. The sound she made when he finally had his mouth on her made him kiss her and lick her thoroughly, enjoying the way she betrayed her pleasure by the change in the thrusts of her hips and her nails grazing his shoulders as she grasped them. He was slowly learning to play her body, to attune himself to her pleasures and needs; next time he would be sure to use his tongue more elaborately. He switched to the other breast and she closed her eyes and let her head fall slightly back. Replacing his mouth with his hand, glorying in the pleasure emanating from her, he was free to complete her request for a poetry evening. _“You,”_ he said with his low, velvety voice. _“You who never arrived in my arms, beloved, who were lost from the start…”_

His voice was the final straw for her; he didn’t get any further before she exclaimed his name and rippled around him. Her pleasure ignited his, and after a few more thrusts he felt the rush of his own white, hot pleasure soar through him. She fell on top of him, limp and sated; he held an arm around her so she’d stay there and caressed her side and back. 

It wasn’t until now – when he was so deeply embedded in the pleasure of having her, of being allowed to love her – that his favourite poem had dared to come to the fore of his mind. The one that for months now had captured for him his sense of never being able to reach her, to truly hold her. It spoke of all his longing and uncertainties, of his resignation and hope. It seemed even in his satisfaction, he matched the melancholy of Rilke perfectly, even if it was more an afterthought than his emotions at the moment. His voice broke slightly as he mumbled the last words against her neck.

>   
>  _You who never arrived_  
>  _in my arms, Beloved, who were lost_  
>  _From the start,_  
>  _I don’t even know what songs_  
>  _would please you._

She shuddered, delighted, and slid down to lie beside him.

“I think you know the songs, Jack,” she said softly, rising on her elbow to look at him and place her hand on his cheek. “You know, I know a poem by heart too. I learned it after our case in Maiden Creek.” She watched him intently before she started to recite _‘But all that touches us, you and me, binds us together like the stroke of a bow that draws one chord from two strings.’_

His throat truly constricted then, when he realised she’d learned that poem because of him, and used it for the two of them. Tears rose in his eyes and she leaned down to kiss them away with featherlight kisses. She had to uncharacteristically clear her throat before she regained her ability to smile.

“You know, Jack. This is what I call a proper poetry evening.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to scruggzi who commented on this fic no less than twice, and who was the one to propose that I use “Buddha in Glory” for its suggestiveness!
> 
> Rainer Maria Rilke and _Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries_ go well together, and this stems all the way from “Death on the Vine” when Jack shows off his knowledge in German by easily translating Rilke (the last quote in this fic, that Phryne says, is taken from here). This has sparked much Rilke love. Hysydney did a wonderful series where she put (predominantly) Rilke quotes to izzyandlouie-images from the show, which [can be found here.](https://hysydney.tumblr.com/tagged/%40izzyandlouie-phrack-calendar-reblog)
> 
> Several Miss Fisher fics have also included Rilke quotes or allusions earlier. One of the fics with most Rilke in it is built around the last poem I give Jack to quote in this fic (“You who never arrived”), and is written by afterdinnerminx. I hope she will repost it, as it was one of the fics that was eradicated in the ficathon deletion; it’s a beautiful story.
> 
> About the quotes: For this fic I decided to pick from different translations, even if they might not always the best and although they are not old enough to have existed at the time; in the fic, Jack reads the original and I attribute all the English versions to be his own translations.
> 
> The first quote (“We do not know…”) is a snippet from the fourth of Rilke’s _The Duino Elegies_ , and I took [the translation from here.](https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/rainer-maria-rilke/duino-elegies-the-fourth-elegy/)
> 
> The second quote is from “The Book of Hours”, and I [borrowed it from here](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/164268-you-darkness-that-i-come-from-i-love-you-more). 
> 
> The third quote, (“Centre of all centres” and the continuation “Now you feel how”) is from “Buddha in Glory”. Jack quotes two out of three stanzas, and I have [borrowed it from here.](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/buddha-in-glory/)
> 
> The fourth quote (“The soft pace”) is from “The Panther”. I made Jack change the gender in the poem, to make the power of the panther be about Phryne. The poem is actually about a panther being caged, but when Jack uses it here, only quoting one stanza from it, it is to highlight power and cat-like movement in contrast to a stillness, which he takes to stand for her and him respectively. 
> 
> I used [the translation found here](http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Rilkemorepoems.php#anchor_Toc69792642), but if anyone is interested in poetry translation, here is [a page collecting a large number of different translations of this exact poem.](http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke3.html)
> 
> The German original of the stanza is:  
> Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,  
> der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,  
> ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,  
> in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.
> 
> For the fifth quote (“For there’s a limit”) I had troubles deciding which translation to use. There is another one that might be slightly better, but in the end I wanted to have the word “gazing” there, because I think it fits so well to these two. [I borrowed this translation.](http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Rilkemorepoems.php#anchor_Toc69792650)
> 
> Another translation instead reads:  
> For there is a boundary to looking.  
> And the world that is looked at so deeply  
> wants to flourish in love.  
> and [it is found here. ](https://roundhousepoetrycircle.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/turning-point/)
> 
> The original is:  
> Denn des Anschauns, siehe, ist eine Grenze.  
> Und die geschaute Welt  
> will in der Liebe gedeihn.
> 
> The sixth quote (“You who never arrived”) is [taken from here](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/52918-you-who-never-arrived-in-my-arms-beloved-who-were). The poem reads in full:
> 
> You who never arrived  
> in my arms, Beloved, who were lost  
> from the start,  
> I don’t even know what songs  
> would please you. I have given up trying  
> to recognize you in the surging wave of  
> the next moment. All the immense  
> images in me – the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,  
> cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected turns in the path,  
> and those powerful lands that were once  
> pulsing with the life of the gods –  
> all rise within me to mean  
> you, who forever elude me. 
> 
> The final quote, that Phryne has memorised (“But all that touches us”), I have taken word by word from the episode, where Jack translates it off the top of his head. Another translation [can be found here.](http://picture-poems.com/week7/planes.html.)


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